


Dead Man's Game

by lazylilking



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: AU, Character Death, Dark!Marco, Death, Guns, M/M, Mentions of Rape, Seventies, Southern accents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 04:03:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3342938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazylilking/pseuds/lazylilking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Since the night he stared death in the face and laughed, the name Marco Bodt has become a Legend. Word had it he's workin' his way east from Cali with a death promise to any man who's ever, or will ever, touch him. His calling card? A bullet to the brain and a kiss stain in your own blood.</p><p>No one knows the story of the one-eyed killer, and anyone stupid enough to try met the wrong end of his revolver. He was dangerous, he was deadly, and if you met him, yer luck done ran out.</p><p>Good thing they called me Unlucky Jean; I hadn't any left when he found me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dead Man's Game

**Author's Note:**

> (There is no depictions of the rape in this story. It's necessary for it to happen, but it's not the focus of my intent. Please enjoy Dark!Marco.)

That night, in a hotel outside of some back-roads California truck stop, Marco Bodt became a legend. And although the tales of his tirade through the south are known as well as the teller’s own names, no one can agree on the beginning. On what started it all.

The “why” behind the reaper.

Maybe it was a life of good finally wearin’ thin, they said, or the act of betrayal thrust upon him like an unwanted gift; or, maybe, it was the wicked blow to the head that left skin clinging to the sink. Either way, it was the blow that knocked him out, and no matter your side on the cause, everyone can agree that when he fell into the darkness, he brought it back within him, a runnin’ through his veins where his blood used to be.

He told me that when his eyes opened again, there was nothin’ left but a cold, empty calm inside. The calmness held him as he struggled to remember how to move his limbs. The same calmness came when he sat up in a blood stained tub, muscles screaming from being beaten to within an inch of his life. The calmness never left him since.

It did, however, grant a pardon to cold, calculatin’ hate.

He told me he stepped over the boot scuffs and bloody slides like they was grass. That the laminate floor he had been so brutally mauled on only hours before didn’t mean shit to him. The glass that cracked under his feet might as well have been sand for all he cared. And when he looked into the remaining mirror, leaning around bloody spidering cracks and saw the charred mass that had once been his right eye, only one thing penetrated the emptiness inside him. A name. A single, whispered name of a man who had gotten him in this mess.

So he did what anyone would have done, he’d reckoned; he’d cleaned up his mess of a face the best he could, rinsed the last bit of blood and semen off of him in the shower and shampoo’d his hair. His clothes were scattered about in the hotel room from the gang trying to grab him, but he found himself an untouched pair of jeans to slip into, stepped into his best leather boots, and flicked his favorite leather vest over his shirt to complete the ensemble. Then he grabbed a pack of smokes off the dresser, flicked open his dad’s old Zippo, and moved the chair around to get the best view of the front door.

Then, he waited.

Marco was halfway through the pack when he showed up. He heard the keys a mile away, snuffed out the butt on his shoe when the footsteps hesitated at the sight of the open door. One bounce, two, then a sharp intake as the man rounded the corner with every intention of grabbing his shit outta the crime scene fleeing but instead freezing solid in the doorway at the sight of Marco, head cocked to the side, fingers drumming on the chair’s fabric.

“M-M-Marco…” He stammered, heart jumpin’ outta his chest at the sight of a dead man, alive and well. Then he took him in. “O-O-Oh jesus, babe, y-y-your face—“

“Evenin’, Thomas.” His voice was cool, an even timbre the blonde had never heard from him before. “Lovely evenin’, at that.”

Thomas’ eyes looked bigger than the good china plates his mama used to keep, he told me, chuckling under his breath. Jesus, was it a sight. He let the man scramble about in his brain for a minute for something, anything, to say, and the way he told me about it seemed like he was just enjoying the stroll, biding his time and making the man squirm. It wasn’t until Marco flicked a cigarette outta his pocket and brought it to his lips that Thomas spoke again.

“I… I thought you’d quit smokin’, baby,”

“Sure did,” He clamped the filter in his teeth and kissed the end with his zippo, taking one long, savory drag of nicotine before motioning to the bed. “Why don’t ya have a seat, Thomas. Make yerself comfy. We can have a nice, long chat ‘for the sun comes up o’er that there horizon, mmkay?” Thomas damn near pissed himself, he said, and it took a few more coaxes of “Go on”s and “Don’t be shy”s before he sank onto the edge with a creak of springs.

Marco rolled the cigarette around with his teeth and sized the man up and down, taking in every inch of his roughed-up appearance. Thomas just waited patiently while he messed with the Zippo in his hands, finally closing it with a _click_. “Ya done fucked up, Thomas,” Was all he said, and the man swallowed hard.

“That I did, baby—“

“And where you been all night?” Thomas paled. “If history’s any lesson, I bet ya were over at that stop playin’ them cards again. Said you weren’t gonna touch no poker table again in yer life,” he continued, “Said yer a _changed man_. Oh, I bet. _Changed_ man indeed.” The smoke rolled from his lips with a dragon’s chuckle, and he realized his partner hadn’t taken his eyes off of his remaining one since he got back.

“W-we’ve both had a long night, baby; _real_ long… maybe we should get ya to a hospital--” Thomas tried, but Marco just tutted his words away.

“Oh, yeah, Thomas. Real, _real_ long night.” The zippo clicked in his hand. “But don’t you look like you’ve had the roughest night of yer life _._ Tell me, did them Braun boys hurt your pride? Did drainin’ ya of all our money not hit home hard enough? Did ya have to gamble every last thing ya had, or was it that you’d been drinkin and talkin’ me up again enough by the end of the night for them to work my name down on the table? Oh, tell me baby; _tell_ me about yer hard fuckin’ night.” Marco’s voice didn’t raise in volume nor pitch, but the man looked like he’d slapped him at the name _Braun_. “Because oh, yeah, _baby_ , they made sure to tell me _all_ about it. They made _sure_ to tell me when I opened the door to let ya back in after I’d gone ta sleep, they made _damn_ sure I knew just who sent them and why they were here. And by the time they left me there,” He motioned to the bathroom, his neck popping from the motion, “Them and _all_ of their little posse had made _damn_ sure I had known my body belonged to them… but you know what?”

He waited.

“…w-what?”

“It’s alright.” Marco told me about how he leaned forward with a smile, trying to remember what it had felt like on his face before that night.

“I-I-It is?” Thomas squeaked, hope tainting his voice.

“Yeah, baby. It is.” He kept smiling as he went on. “And you wanna know why?”

“W-w-why?”

“Because, you came back,” He drawled, letting it roll off his tongue with enough conviction Thomas relaxed and turned away to scratch his neck, then pulled his colt revolver out from between the seat cushions. “And now I ain’t gotta go lookin’ for ya, _baby._

“Lucky me.”

Marco paused when he got to this part of the story, a bitter smile ghosting his lips. _“Ya shoulda seen how pale he went,”_ he told me, his amber eye staring off into the night sky. _“Ya shoulda seen the fear in that man’s eyes. Made me wonder, ‘was that what I looked like?’ Oh, Darlin’, it was a sight to see, the sheer terror when I drew back the hammer and dropped that smile finally.”_

Thomas had blubbered, begged, cried like a bitch under the cold press of metal against his temple, but like I’d said, Marco’d brought back the darkness with him, and the Darkness didn’t give a shit.

“Shut up, Thomas,” He’d stated, pulling the trigger with a deafening _crack_. The brains of a man he’d devoted years of his life trying to see the good in sprayed over the beds and back wall, and as the oozing mess gathered on the floor, he found it funny he still couldn’t see any good in the carnage.

He crossed Thomas’ name off the list, kissed what was left of his cheek, found a twenty in the bible in the bedside, and made himself a silent vow.

This vow was what chased his long strides into the night, promising death to any man who had ever, or would ever, touch his flesh.

And it was this legacy that would follow him across the west, he said, his name whispered in the back corners of bars and every holding cell from Vegas to New Orleans, his destination unknown but his trail of death and calling card as familiar as the verses spouted every Sunday. He laughed at them when he heard them, wonderin’ if it’d be as known if he hadn’t found one of the seven boys in a diner just up the road, wonderin’ what they would have called him if he hadn’t gotten the whimsy after puttin’ a bullet through his brains to see if his body was as warm as Thomas’ had been when he kissed him goodbye. It’s that kiss mark, stamped in yer own blood, that made him out to be a legend.

 _“Marco Bodt, the Kiss of Death,”_ He’d mused, clicking his cigarette lighter closed for the thousandth time since starting the story. _“I always wondered if it was that boy in Cali who earned it for me, or if it was my little show in Vegas.”_ He mulled over a thought for a second. _“Vegas… truly was interesting.”_

 _“Interesting?”_ I’d asked, having politely listened to his words without interruption the entire way through. Nearly an hour had passed since he’d begun, but if there was anyone who deserved undivided attention, it was the man sitting before me.

 _“Well,”_ He stated like it was the most obvious thing in the world, like he’d expected me to ask. _“That’s where I picked you up, ain’t it?”_

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr- http://lazy-the-fandom.tumblr.com/
> 
> Next chapter-- Marco's heard word there's a pretty young miss in Vegas who can point him in the direction of the Braun Gang. What he wasn't expecting was picking up an extra quest along the way.


End file.
